I have reloaded lots of different bullets in different chamberings over a few years. Generally speaking, I tend to work out the max COAL for a given bullet in my actual rifle and ladder test with bullets seated 0.025" from the lands. Often that results in perfectly good enough accuracy but where it has not, increasing cartridge length has quickly realised stellar accuracy. I have never needed to jam bullets.
Fast forward to the last couple of weeks and I have been putting together a load to shoot the Barnes 62gn Varmint Grenades in 6mm.
I loaded up the usual 10 rounds or so to ladder test to find velocity plateaus and I then start testing for accuracy once I have chosen my charge weight. When testing charge weight velocities initially, rather than loading all cartridges 25 thou back from the lands, I loaded them all 0.050" shorter than max COAL inline with consensus with Barnes bullets in general. They evidently want a bigger jump than standard lead cored bullets. They aint wrong.
So I choose my charge weight and start putting together some cartridges for accuracy testing. 4 at 0.050", 4 at 0.075" and 4 at 0.100" off the lands. All 3 different seating depths shot like cack. Fair enough, so I go deeper. Same again but this time at 0.125", 0.150" and 0.175". Back to the field, shoot some groups and all are scattergun apart from the 0.175" which showed significantly better accuracy but still not what I would accept for the application i will be using it for. So i then load up the next batch at 0.200", 0.225" and 0.250" ha ha ha. At 0.250", it is on the limit of seeing a touch of daylight between the top lip of the neck and the bearing surface of the bullet shank. Still lots of bearing surface in contact with neck and neck tension fine but its looking a bit odd. These are long bullets given their weird lightweight powdered tin core, so there is a huge amount of bullet now inside the case. I go to the field and immediately 0.200" fires in under 3/4" and the next batch of 0.225" goes in to half an inch. The crazy deep 0.250" starts to show signs of opening up a bit in comparison but still an order of magnitude better than the initial earlier loads which grouped appallingly.
So, job done and load found but wow that is deep. I know certain bullets like a jump but this seems a touch mad but if it works, it aint crazy right?
Anyone else found mad behaviour with certain bullets?
I found very little information, at least for reach compliant powders, when trying to glean info on loading for this bullet. H380 was the apparent champion stateside, so i went with N140 and CCI BR2's and they certainly motor along. I found lots of info from people saying this bullet was basically no good and they could not get it to shoot. I wonder how many people try seating them super deep? Barnes clearly recommend trying to seat these deeper and deeper until you get results but this does seem extreme. Anyway, maybe this could help people if they wanted to find a non lead bullet that does actually expand and provide proper varmint like performance. It might save a few 6mm rifles that might end up being chopped in for a .224 when/if this stupid lead ban comes in.
Fast forward to the last couple of weeks and I have been putting together a load to shoot the Barnes 62gn Varmint Grenades in 6mm.
I loaded up the usual 10 rounds or so to ladder test to find velocity plateaus and I then start testing for accuracy once I have chosen my charge weight. When testing charge weight velocities initially, rather than loading all cartridges 25 thou back from the lands, I loaded them all 0.050" shorter than max COAL inline with consensus with Barnes bullets in general. They evidently want a bigger jump than standard lead cored bullets. They aint wrong.
So I choose my charge weight and start putting together some cartridges for accuracy testing. 4 at 0.050", 4 at 0.075" and 4 at 0.100" off the lands. All 3 different seating depths shot like cack. Fair enough, so I go deeper. Same again but this time at 0.125", 0.150" and 0.175". Back to the field, shoot some groups and all are scattergun apart from the 0.175" which showed significantly better accuracy but still not what I would accept for the application i will be using it for. So i then load up the next batch at 0.200", 0.225" and 0.250" ha ha ha. At 0.250", it is on the limit of seeing a touch of daylight between the top lip of the neck and the bearing surface of the bullet shank. Still lots of bearing surface in contact with neck and neck tension fine but its looking a bit odd. These are long bullets given their weird lightweight powdered tin core, so there is a huge amount of bullet now inside the case. I go to the field and immediately 0.200" fires in under 3/4" and the next batch of 0.225" goes in to half an inch. The crazy deep 0.250" starts to show signs of opening up a bit in comparison but still an order of magnitude better than the initial earlier loads which grouped appallingly.
So, job done and load found but wow that is deep. I know certain bullets like a jump but this seems a touch mad but if it works, it aint crazy right?
Anyone else found mad behaviour with certain bullets?
I found very little information, at least for reach compliant powders, when trying to glean info on loading for this bullet. H380 was the apparent champion stateside, so i went with N140 and CCI BR2's and they certainly motor along. I found lots of info from people saying this bullet was basically no good and they could not get it to shoot. I wonder how many people try seating them super deep? Barnes clearly recommend trying to seat these deeper and deeper until you get results but this does seem extreme. Anyway, maybe this could help people if they wanted to find a non lead bullet that does actually expand and provide proper varmint like performance. It might save a few 6mm rifles that might end up being chopped in for a .224 when/if this stupid lead ban comes in.
